Cats saved under new program at Capital Area Humane Society

Tuesday

May 26, 2015 at 12:01 AMMay 26, 2015 at 6:42 AM

Not one healthy cat has been euthanized at the Capital Area Humane Society since October, thanks to a new program known as ReVision. "The transformation is remarkable," Executive Director Rachel Finney said last week.

Kathy Lynn Gray, The Columbus Dispatch

Not one healthy cat has been euthanized at the Capital Area Humane Society since October, thanks to a new program known as ReVision.

The program takes a three-pronged approach: offering help to foster parents, dramatically lowering adoption fees and providing immediate veterinary checks for turned-in cats.

From Sept. 1 through April 30, the society killed 865 cats, compared with 2,392 during the same period a year earlier. The placement rate for cats during that time rocketed to 63 percent, compared with 37 percent the year before.

And the placement rate continues to rise — it was 71 percent in April, Finney said.

For years, the society has had to euthanize healthy cats when it runs out of space.

The new program begins with help for those who take cats to the shelter at 3015 Scioto-Darby Executive Court near Hilliard.

A veterinary team immediately checks each animal. For healthy felines, the shelter offers low-cost or free vaccinations, low-cost spaying or neutering and free supplies such as food and litter. Often, those incentives are enough to persuade people to keep a cat they’d planned to surrender, Finney said.

“The biggest conversion is for people who bring in stray cats,” she said. “They come in for the health check and find out the cat is healthy. Then they don’t have that massive investment on the front end at a vet.”

Finney said the society even offers carpet-stain removers, upholstery cleaners and odor-neutralizing sprays if that will persuade someone to adopt or foster a cat they had planned to give up.

“We’re stripping away every barrier we can for someone stepping up to help an animal in need,” she said.

That’s meant that 355 cats returned to a home with someone who had planned to give them up during the first eight months of the ReVision program, Finney said.

For cats that stay at the shelter, the society works to find them homes via RescueNet, a members-only Facebook page where rescue groups can see photos and information on cats that have been turned in. Such groups have taken 124 cats through RescueNet in the first eight months of ReVision, Finney said.

A cut in adoption fees also has promoted adoptions. Adult cats are $10, down from $45; and kittens are $25, down from $70.

The ReVision program hasn’t been cheap. Finney said the society is spending $200,000 more annually than under the old cat-adoption model. Grants cover some of the costs.

A second cat-friendly innovation also is in the works: an expanded spay-and-neuter program to help reduce Franklin County’s feral-cat population, which Finney estimates is about 400,000. An earlier attempt died from lack of funding in 2012.

Now, a grant from PetSmart Charities will help pay for spay-and-neuter surgery seven days a week at the shelter. Previously, the surgery was offered only four days a week. That means feral cats can be sterilized at no cost to those who take them in as part of a trap-and-release program.

Fourth-year students at Ohio State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine do the surgeries, said Dr. Lawrence N. Hill, the director of the shelter surgery program and an associate professor at the college.

Each student works at the shelter for two weeks and, under the new program, will average 24 rather than 12 sterilizations on dogs and cats during a rotation.

“They’ll get better at it because they’ll be doing it repetitively,” he said.

Because cats can have three litters of five to six kittens each per year, sterilizing feral cats at the shelter should have an effect.

“We hope to do 50 a week,” Finney said. “Hopefully, it’ll dramatically reduce the number of feral cats.”

kgray@dispatch.com

@reporterkathy

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.